This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Because of its increasing triviality, everyday life has gradually become our central preoccupation. No illusion, sacred or deconsecrated, collective or individual, can hide the poverty of our daily actions any longer. The enrichment of life calls inexorably for the analysis of the new forms taken by poverty, and the perfection of the old weapons of refusal.
Life | Life | Perfection | Poverty | Sacred | Weapons | Old |
The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry.
If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them.
Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd
The questions continue to grow. The doubts are beginning to drown out the assurances. For every insistence from Washington that the weapons of mass destruction case against Iraq is sound comes a counterpoint from the field -- another dry hole, another dead end.
Roger L. Shinn, fully Roger Lincoln Shinn
Now history under God's providence has reached the era of perpetual emergency, when man's age~old sin combined with his new technology threatens the survival of the human race. Even the most violent of men must recognize that there can be no satisfaction in destroying an enemy by thermonuclear weapons while he is destroying us. But the world is caught in the mood of bitter, tragic necessity. The Sermon on the Mount offers no program to present to Congress or the United Nations. But something of its vision and daring, combined with wise statecraft, offer the only hope for mankind.
Enemy | Era | History | Hope | Men | Present | Providence | Sin | Survival | Technology | Vision | Weapons | Wise | World |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
DUOLOGUE - God: "Daughter of Zion, tried in Sorrow’s furnace, E’en as I swore thy fathers, be at rest. I swore it for My sake, and now thy crying Hath mounted to My habitation blest, And I have heard, for gracious is My breast." Israel: "Obeisance low I made, for I am feeble, Thy kindliness responds to all who yearn. Come back, dear Lord, whose name is linked with pardon, No other saviour Israel can discern, Unto his myriad families return!" God: "Where’er thy origin, whosoe’er thy master, A man shall come—nay, I—thy cause to plead, Whoever holds the bill of thy divorcement. Like wall or tower of fire I guard thy seed, Then wherefore weep or heart affrighted heed?" p. 29 Israel: "Why do I weep? Because Thou keepest silence, Though violence rages and, all uncontrolled, The mob destroys, and we as slaves to strangers, Master and man together, have been sold, And no Redeemer do our eyes behold." God: "Who art thou thus to shrink from man in terror And be dismayed because of mankind’s scorn? My angel I will send, as wrote the prophet, And gather Israel winnowed and new-born: This miracle shall be to-morrow morn." Israel: "To gather me my chieftains Thou didst promise, The day comes not and miracle is none, Nor see I Temple built nor any herald Of Peace arrive to be my Holy One— Ah, wherefore lingers Jesse’s promised son?" God: "Behold, I keep the oath I swore to gather My captives—kings shall bring their gifts to thee; Created for a witness to the nations, My holy ones shall testify to Me— Yea, Jesse’s son Mine eyes already see."
Art | Force | Heart | Hope | Kindness | Mercy | Pain | People | Sorrow | Tears | Vision | Weapons | Art |
Edwin Arnold, fully Sir Edwin Arnold
Almond blossom, sent to teach us That the spring days soon will reach us. Blossom of the almond trees, April’s gift to April’s bees. Early violets blue and white Dying for their love of light. He who died at Azan sends This to comfort all his friends: Faithful friends! It lies I know Pale and white and cold as snow; And ye say, “Abdallah’s dead”! Weeping at the feet and head, I can see your falling tears, I can hear your sighs and prayers; Yet I smile and whisper this: I am not the thing you kiss. Cease your tears and let it lie; It was mine—it is not I. The sunbeams dropped Their gold, and, passing in porch and niche, Softened to shadows, silvery, pale, and dim, As if the very Day paused and grew Eve. Pity and need Make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood. Who doth right deeds Is twice born, and who doeth ill deeds vile. With a bee in every bell, Almond bloom, we greet thee well. A little rain will fill the lily’s cup, which hardly moists the field. It makes sweet human music,—oh! the spells that haunt the trembling tale a bright-eyed maiden tells! Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,—wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each, even to the meanest,—yea, a boon to all where pity is; for pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble for the strong. Making all futures fruits of all the past. Oh, the spells that haunt the trembling tale a bright-eyed maiden tells! Pity makes the world soft to the weak, and noble for the strong. The ordered music of the marching orbs. There is no caste in blood. Yet who shall shut out fate?
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern.
Challenge | Day | Defense | Mankind | Prison | Security | Technology | Weapons |
Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"
The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands.
People | Plan | Struggle | Understanding | Weapons | Learn |
May it please our Lord that I be not one of these; and may His Majesty give me grace to take that for peace which is really peace, that for honor which is really honor, and that for delight which is really a delight. Let me never mistake one thing for another — and then I snap my fingers at all the devils, for they shall be afraid of me. I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. I have spent some years of such great anxiety, that even now I am amazed that I was able to bear it. Blessed be our Lord, who has so effectually helped me!
Evil | Fear | Friend | Harm | Hell | Love | Nothing | Peace | Satan | Service | Sin | Terror | Understanding | Weapons | Will | World | Understand |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A hero is a man who stands up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him.
As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable.
Action | Change | Duty | Learning | Life | Life | Public | Right | Weapons | Understand |
Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory.
You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it.
Philosophy | Time | Weapons |